A short and gruesome story

4 out of 5 stars

The narration for Black Virus was done by Tristan Morris who does a great job. He moved this already quick story along quite well, allowing the reader to just enjoy this pretty gruesome tale.

Bobby Adair knows how to write a Bio-Thriller (see any of the Ebola K series). But, this (even though the name would suggest it) is NOT like those other books. This is a different take on a zombie/unrelenting force story. While there is nothing wrong with that, I often get really disappointed when I think that a book is going to be more about the virus that takes over then how people are seen from the outside.

Regardless, Black Virus was still an incredibly interesting story. I will warn you, this book is not for the faint of heart. There are some gruesome scenes within it, and I promise it will upset and scare away some readers. But, on the flip side — Adair wrote a very real, gritty, and just honest rendition of what would happen during an outbreak if someone was forced to survive and endure.

The main character is by the authors own writing — different. And that makes a unique and interesting point of view for Black Virus.

I just wish the story was more about the virus: where it came from, what it was doing, and what the world was doing to try and stop it. There were glimmers of that here and there, but overall the story was much more about Christian.

Alienated in a world where he doesn’t fit in, Christian Black survives because he’s different. Then the virus came, and made the world turn different, too. Now people are dying by the million. Food supplies are short. Riots are blazing through the streets, and Christian’s only goal is to keep his family alive. But safety lies far from the city, and just getting out will be tougher than anyone knows.

About the Author:

After rewarding and successful careers in widow bilking, candy stealing, and puppy punting, Bobby served for a time in the peas corps. That last one was an accident of not paying attention. He thought he was joining the Peace Corp and instead found himself shacked up with migrant farm workers harvesting tiny vegetables.

It wasn’t until the winter of ’83 when the migrants were snowed in and forced to eat a three-legged transient in order to survive that Bobby began an introspective journey that led him to the summits of average-height mountains, through semi-arid deserts, and across relatively narrow oceans, that he discovered that the word introspection didn’t mean what he thought it did. So, he sat down on a heavily trafficked thoroughfare in Bangalore, India and thought about things for a while.

Affluent Indians with high-tech jobs often offered to lend him assistance and kindly left him with enough Rupees to buy fried-bug sandwiches and used apple cores. His hair grew long, and his beard turned scraggly. His clothes wore thin. Puny parasitic insects befriended him in one-sided relationships.

Then one day, a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks and a New Jersey accent came and squatted beside Bobby on the road and asked him what he was doing among the beggars and stray animals. Bobby told him that he was on a journey of the mind and was searching for a direction in a life that seemed to have no meaning.

Dreadlock Man laughed and laughed.

Bobby asked, “Why are you laughing?”

Dreadlock Man said, “You’re a writer, you idiot. Stop sitting on a curb doing nothing and go write something.” Then he smiled and walked away.

After sitting on the curb begging for Rupees for another thirteen years while his head told him that Dreadlock’s prediction made no sense, Bobby couldn’t overcome the contrary certainty in his heart that Dreadlock Man had spoken true. He had to be right. Bobby realized, he had to write.

So, he did.

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I’ve loved reading since I was little when my dad would read me Dr. Suess books. Fast-forward a little and I noticed that he was always reading on his lunch breaks at work, and I wondered why.Then, I found a book that took me to another place and time, to another feeling,another sense of “being”.It was the first book that I ever fell in love with, and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.